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for modernism, Warhol has done for post-moderrusm." (Smith, 1988). The
huge studio that Warhol ran in Manhattan from the mid-1960s until his
death in 1987 may, at first glance, have seemed to be something like a mas–
ter's atelier, since it was the epicenter of New York's Pop Art scene.
Warhol called his studio" the Factory" because of the stupendous vol–
ume of painting and film making that went on in it. But the Factory's main
renown has been attributed to its serving as "a combination clubhouse,
community center, lounge and cruising area and stamping ground for
some of New York's more outlandish types-preening fashion models,
ranting amphetamine heads, sulky poets, underground movie makers, and
imperious magazine editors." (Bourdon, 1989). The term "post-modern
master" may be an oxymoron.
There is no use bemoaning the vanishing of the good old times. The
advent of post-modernism did not happen haphazardly; it is rooted in the
profound changes that occurred in personal values, ambitions and beliefs.
Most of us probably consider these changes to be benign advances over the
stultifYing mores and conventions of the past, changes that outweigh what–
ever noxious effects they may have had on artistic and scientific creativity.
Yet, all the same, for our understanding of the present, we need to take
stock of what has been lost.
One loss incurred by the postmodern disappearance of masters in sci–
ence and art is the waning of the spiritual dimension that used to be a
major social role of these two principal spheres of human creative activi–
ty. With almost no masters left to project a halo of incorruptibility and to
serve as arbiters of good manners and taste, science and art have turned into
mundane occupations, whose value is judged more by their cost-effective–
ness in achieving technological advance or populist acclaim than by their
contributions to the general cultural level of society.
Two recent actions of the U.S. Congress exemplifY this devolution of
spiritual value. One example is the cancellation of the Superconducting
Super Collider in Texas midway during its construction, after many mil–
lions of dollars had already been spent on it. Congress judged that the
expected practical benefits of this most costly megaproject in the history
of science do not warrant its expense, even though its cancellation means
the end of vanguard experimental research at the frontiers of nuclear par–
ticle physics. Another example is the slashing of congressional
appropriations for the National Endowment for the Arts, on the grounds
that much of the art it supports lacks authentic aesthetic value.
It
would be a mistake to trivialize these developments by simply
attributing them to the stupidity or want of cultural vision of political
hacks in Washington. More likely, the deeper cause of these by no means
unreasonable Congressional decisions is the cultural
Zeitgeist
of the mas–
terless
fin du vingtieme siecle.
